


who do you pray for

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [40]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Accents, Apologies, But is it really?, Clint wants to get into Matt's Pants and defend his honor, Friendship, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Identity Reveal, M/M, One-Sided Relationship, as in, i'm leaning into the dumpster theme with this one, this isn't a clint/matt fic I'm afraid, while matt often forgets he exists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-10
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-11-02 02:36:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20593316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: “You,” Castle cackled. “You. Oh my god. Oh my god, that’s incredible.”Barnes looked at Clint for permission to pound this guy in the head. Clint didn’t give it to him. He wasn’t worth it.“You just wait, asshole,” he said instead. “We’ll see who’s laughin’ when Red’s warming this lap.”Castle started laughing so hard he had to clutch at his stomach.(Clint recruits Barnes to help him figure out who the hell Red's partner is and to see if he's even got a chance at winning his affections.)





	who do you pray for

**Author's Note:**

> So shit gets real in the middle of this. Don't say I didn't warn you. this one is a continuation of the relationship we start to see in **thimbles of liquor** so you may want to read that one for more context.
> 
> references to gunshot wounds, medical emergencies, and panic attacks down below, please do what you need to to keep yourselves safe. 
> 
> also please note: I do love Clint and he's not being malicious when he's working through this stuff. And Sam is aware of Matt's identity. You can see **when you need the devil** for more on how he does.

The moment Red had tumbled into Clint’s arms from a burning building that weekend, Clint knew.

They were meant to be.

Red had clung to him for the briefest second. His toned—god, so toned and firm--arms had found their way around Clint’s neck in surprise at his (heroic) savior, and, in the warm glow of that fiery warehouse on the water, he must have come to his senses and seen the light.

Clint had set him down on his feet and prepared himself for the inevitable, grateful kiss. But Red, bless him, had gotten embarrassed and, by the time Clint had re-opened his eyes, had vanished into the night.

Ahhhhhh.

So cute. So bashful.

So taken aback to be faced by a true hero in the face of imminent death.

So—

“Anyways, Red’s terrified of water,” Sam told Barnes.

“No shit?” Barnes asked, jamming his straw around in his smoothie to dislodge a rogue piece of non-pulverized fruit.

“Yeah, apparently he’s not the world’s greatest swimmer,” Sam mused.

“’S unfortunate,” Barnes hummed. “I guess everyone’s got their Achilles heel.”

“EXCUSE ME,” Clint reminded his audience, “I am _talking_ here.”

The other two side-eyed him, then went back to their lunch-yammering.

“Did Nat tell you that?” Barnes asked Sam.

“Yeah, she said when they were dating, she pushed him in a pool as a joke and it went the opposite direction of sexy real quick.”

“Oh, damn. Pretty cool of him to stick around for this last time, then I guess.”

“Mm. Well, Peter tells me Deadpool saw it all go down and has spent the last week trying to haul the poor guy to the pool for mercenary swimming lessons.”

Barnes choked on his smoothie and thumped his chest.

“That’s _amazing_,” he croaked after his dance with death had passed. “Fucking _a-mazing_. I would pay admission for that.”

Clint grumbled and pouted and leaned his cheek petulantly on the heel of his palm. These people, man. No one appreciated him or the service he was offering humanity here.

He realized after a moment of making his half-sandwich dance around that the other two were watching him expectantly. They must have asked him something.

“What?” he spat.

“You alright?” Sam asked.

No. Obviously.

“I’m great,” he lied. And took a big bite of turkey and cheese.

The other two were not convinced. Barnes made meaningful eye contact with Sam and they communicated telepathically for a few moments while Clint improved his sandwich by shoving Doritos in among the cheese.

Shit needed some texture already. And taste; taste was also a good option here.

“Barton, you know Red’s taken, right?” Barnes asked.

Ugh.

This again.

“Yes,” he grumbled.

“Then why the full-on romance?” Barnes asked. “He’s probably happily married or some shit.”

Yeah, to Frank fucking Castle.

Just wait until Clint got his hands on the guy. Leaving poor Red out on his lonesome like that. Leaving him to jump out of burning buildings into harbors like he wasn’t better than a drunk rat.

The nerve of that guy.

Sam made a high-pitched sound that got Clint’s attention. He looked his way and turned up the volume in one of his hearing aids, then waved at it in a ‘yes, go on then, asshole, you’ve obviously got something to add’ gesture.

Sam coughed through a laugh like a dick, then cleared his throat.

“It ain’t Frank Castle, buddy. I promise,” he said.

“Bullshit,” Clint huffed. “I’ve seen the two of them together, man, don’t even try me. Red’s always wrapping himself around that guy’s arm and does he even notice? No, Sam, no he don’t. Not even a lick of attention. It’s like he can’t even see what he’s got in front of him.”

“Or he’s straight,” Barnes offered unhelpfully.

Yeah, and Clint was a mule.

“He ain’t straight,” he sniffed.

“He might be, you never know. Guy had a wife and kids; that’s straight people shit,” Barnes pointed out.

“Means jack shit and you know it, _sergeant_,” Clint snapped. “Look at Steve. He is a pillar of masculinity. He could have as many wives and kids as he wants, but do you see him going out getting married and picket-fenced and shit? No.”

Barnes lifted an eyebrow at him.

“I once watched Stevie seduce two sailors in one night, man,” he said. “He ain’t never been straight. The only difference between him now and him then is that he finally grew up out of his twink phase.” 

Sam pounded a hand helplessly on his knee while Clint rolled his eyes.

“The point _is_,” he drawled. “Red’s bein’ neglected when he could be bein’ cherished by yours truly, you know, in a kind of biblical way.”

Sam moved on to lightly pounding the table with his palm. Barnes was less impressed with Clint’s endless wit and good looks.

“Nat’s already fucked him. You think you can top that?” he asked.

“Well, that’s the aim here, pal.”

Barnes snorted.

“Sorry, my bad. You think he’d let _you_ top him?”

Clint didn’t see why not. He was a big guy. He was about Castle’s size. Nice hair, pretty eyes. He smelled good; he’d made Kate and Natasha check and then he’d submitted to both of them dragging him out to pick cologne and aftershave that they deemed appropriate for his chemistry and general being. Nat said he smelled sexy, even (Kate told him he was marginally more tolerable to be around, which was high praise coming from the likes of her).

“I can be sexy, sir,” he informed Barnes’s goddamn eyebrow. “You don’t have a monopoly on sex appeal.”

That eyebrow just crept higher and higher. Sam’s cackling, on the other hand, seemed to be fading into wheezing.

Clint opened his mouth to finish Cyborg-douche off, when Sam finally sat up, gasping, and interrupted by coughing into his fist.

He wiped tears from his eyes.

“Oh god, Clint,” he said. “Warn someone, would you? Anyways, man, no. You ain’t got a chance. I know his boo, and his boo ain’t nothin’ like you.”

Say what, now?

Clint zeroed his focus in on Samuel.

“It’s Frank Castle,” he said.

Sam shook his head, still wiping away tears.

“It has to be,” Clint said. “I see them together all the fuckin’ time. Unless it’s—oh my god, is it _Wilson_?”

Sam pressed a few fingers to his nose to hold back to next peal of giggles.

“No,” he finally said. “Neither—he hates Castle. He mostly wants to annoy the shit out of him until he dies, actually. And no, it ain’t Wilson, either. They got some kind of ‘love-ya-like-a-brother’ thing going on.”

Barnes glanced over at Clint, and lazily scratched at his stubble with one of his painted nails.

“Do I know him, this boo?” he asked conspiratorially.

Sam snorted at him.

“I don’t kiss and tell,” he said.

“You _kissed_ him, Samuel Thomas?” Barnes gasped. He splayed the full set of them nails wide over his face. “You _monster_. Wait ‘til I tell Steven.”

Sam’s expression went flat in an instant.

“You dumbass; no, I didn’t kiss him. I just ain’t snitchin’ on him. I’ve got a relationship to keep up here.”

Barnes dropped his act immediately and leaned halfway across the table into Sam’s space.

“So this guy’s close to you, then,” he said. “Is it Tom, the contractor?”

Sam rolled his eyes and lurched forward to standing. He collected the remnants of his lunch.

“Not playing this game, JB,” he said.

“Is it Manny the CPA?” Barnes asked after him.

He got a single-fingered salute for his trouble. He slumped back in his seat and huffed.

The Winter Soldier, much like his Widow compatriot, had a need to know things; and when he did not or was not allowed to know them, he suffered a compulsion to find out.

Clint watched him.

He could harness that power.

“Too bad he won’t say,” he noted, picking at the plastic of his sandwich tray. He had Barnes’s attention; he didn’t have to check. “Must be one of Sam’s real people friends or something. You know how he gets with those folks, all ‘don’t drag my coworkers into Avengers business,’ ‘don’t talk to my vets, you heathens.’”

Barnes said nothing. Clint still didn’t make eye contact.

Barnes wasn’t interested in being a wingman; this had to be about principle for him. So Clint sighed and stood up to gather his own trash for the recycling.

“I guess Sam’s got his rights,” he said. “Kinda weird how he’s cool with vigilantes bein’ around his folks but not us, though. Sounds a little sketchy to me.”

He allowed himself a glance and noted how still Barnes’s purple nails were on the table.

Gotcha.

He took four steps.

“The fuck do you think you’re goin’, Barton?”

It was a beautiful thing, having a human weapon-cum-spy on your side. This was not Clint’s first time with one. He had a knack for collecting them, actually. Natasha, for example.

Well, mostly only Natasha, but whatever. That was neither here, nor there.

The point was that with Barnes’s help, he’d be unstoppable.

The first job was to interrogate Castle, after all, and there was no way Clint could have cracked that un-crackable nut without the big guy next to him.

Castle lived out of approximately twenty hovels all over the city. Finding him was like trying to find one of them flax seeds that were in everything these days in one of your damn cavities. Even if you found it, there was no guarantee that it was coming out easy.

They split up for a few hours and got nowhere, then came back together to check out eight places dotted along the edges of Hell’s Kitchen—Red’s territory, and ergo his frequent conflict grounds with Castle.

It was daytime, so Red didn’t show up to defend the borders of his home. Clint imagined that he probably slept during the day. Like an angry little horned owl. All nestled down in itself.

Adorable.

“He probably just doesn’t sleep, Clint,” Barnes told him like a massive wet blanket.

Clint ignored him. He was not here for morale or motivation. He was here for practical purposes only.

They found Castle. Interestingly enough, they found him arguing with a guy at a dry cleaner who kept telling him to get the fuck outta ‘ere, while he told him to suck his dick.

Clint would never understand how people in Hell’s Kitchen communicated with each other. The culture here was like New York concentrated.

“You ever thought that maybe that means Red ain’t full of nothin’ but piss and vinegar, Barton?”

Silence you. You are brawn and brawn only.

Castle spotted them almost immediately. His eyes were fuckin’ dark, man. He was dangerous as hell. Clint almost wanted to get out of there, just on sight of the guy, but he held his own. Castle sneered at him, but at Barnes especially, and swung around the corner out of sight.

Barnes sniffed. Then started to follow.

Clint panicked and caught ahold of his fleshy arm but ended up just getting dragged.

“Dude,” he hissed as his sneakers scraped over broken glass and dirt on the pavement. “Maybe let’s not go towards the Punisher’s den, huh? Maybe let’s find an open space where someone can hear us scream, yeah?”

Barnes ignored him.

“He’s agreeing to meet with us, dumbass,” he said. “If he didn’t want us to follow ‘im, he’d have shot us on sight or something.”

What?

Oh. That made sense actually.

Castle’s face when Barnes flat out asked him if he and Red were an item was—Clint wouldn’t say upset, so much as deeply concerned.

“Is that what people’re sayin’?” Castle rasped.

“People ain’t talkin’ yet,” Barnes said coolly. “But you keep goin’ round with pretty boys hanging off your arm like that, and you can be sure that they’re gonna start.”

Clint felt like he was witnessing two rival factions from Newsies coming together to arrange a deal.

Beautiful, it was. The strength of these accents and the resolute refusal to mention any specifics was peak suspense and drama.

“He ain’t hangin’ onto me ‘cause of th—” Castle stopped. Backtracked. “We ain’t nothing,” he said instead. “Not a damn thing there. Guy’s a pain in my ass every day of the damn week. Only thing that keeps us near the other is that we got a mutual friend. That’s all.”

Oh, a mutual friend they had, did they?

“Yeah, you got somethin’ to say about it, Arrow-boy?” Castle asked darkly.

Nope. Actually, not a damn thing. That was great, friendship was excellent. Please carry on.

Barnes crossed his arms.

“You know who he’s seein’, then?” he asked. Castle scoffed.

“You looking for a lay, Sergeant?” he asked. “Don’t got enough at home?”

“You lookin’ to keep them teeth, darlin’?” Barnes countered.

O-kay, that was good. They’d gotten what they’d come for. Clint got a hand on Barnes as a signal to stop posturing.

“He’s got two of the hottest guys in America, man,” Clint said to Castle. “He ain’t asking for him.”

He received Castle’s full attention in a dead-eyed stare. Then it cracked and boy, did Clint hate how it cracked.

It started with an eyebrow, then Castle’s goddamn lip twitched and arched up into his goddamned cheek in a smirk.

“_You’re_ looking for a day out with Red?” he asked like this was the funniest fucking joke he’d heard in years.

Clint scoffed at him.

“Ain’t none of your business what I’m lookin’ for,” he said.

“You,” Castle said with a finger this time. “_You’re_ tryin’ to get in Red’s pants.”

“Fuck off,” Clint told him. He pulled at Barnes. “We’re done here.”

Castle laughed. Actually laughed. And if Clint hadn’t wanted to sock him in the gut, he might have admitted that it was kind of charming.

“_You_,” Castle cackled. “_You_. Oh my god. Oh my god, that’s incredible.”

Barnes looked at Clint for permission to pound this guy in the head. Clint didn’t give it to him. He wasn’t worth it.

“You just wait, asshole,” he said instead. “We’ll see who’s laughin’ when Red’s warming this lap.”

Castle started laughing so hard he had to clutch at his stomach.

What a dick.

“Oh god,” he moaned, wiping at his face like Sam had back at lunch. “Oh my god, Hawkeye. Oh god. You know what?”

He stood up straight and coughed. He wiped a hand on his pants and then held it out with a _fucking_ brilliant grin. It made his eyes crinkle and his eyebrows soften.

Oh, no.

Oh, _no_.

Clint took the hand.

“Best of luck,” Castle said with that damn sparkling smile. “You’re gonna need it.”

“What a fucking dick,” Clint groused on the way back down south. “What a fucking dick.”

“You know, he ain’t so mean-lookin’ when he’s not looking to maim someone,” Barnes noted.

“You shut your goddamn mouth, sir,” Clint snapped.

He already had sixteen thousand vigilante crushes. He didn’t need any more. And especially not any on nut jobs like Castle. No.

Eyes on the prize.

“We need to get Sam to talk,” he decided.

“Well, yeah. Him or the other Wilson,” Barnes said.

Clint pouted and thought about it.

“Sam says Red and Wilson aren’t a thing,” he reminded his hairy companion. Barnes shrugged.

“And? They’re still friends, though. Anyways, Wilson’s a merc. He’ll tell you anything you want for a couple of hundreds.”

Ehn.

That was true.

Deadpool gave them one look and told them to the fuck back to Brooklyn, they weren’t wanted here.

It was kind of flattering that he knew that Clint lived down that way, too, honestly. High ranking mercs keeping tabs on his location was kind of a confirmation of his own hero-status.

Pretty neat.

When you got past the paranoia and horror.

“C’mon man, we’re just tryin’ to get your baby brother laid,” Barnes needled. “This is good for everyone. I’m sure he’s a pain in your ass with all that aggression.”

Deadpool’s mask was really hard to read. Spidey seemed to know how to do it like it was second nature. He’d shared this information with no one, however and, given his whole ‘fuck the Avengers’ attitude at the minute, it did not appear like it would be shared any time soon.

Eventually DP’s mask shifted a little.

“Red’s already got someone,” DP said.

Right.

“Does he now?” Barnes asked, playing dumb and pretty.

He did it well with them grey-blue eyes and all that hair.

“He does,” DP said.

“They good enough for Deadpool’s kid brother?” Barnes pressed. Clint supported him with a judgmental eyebrow at the big guy.

The big guy chuffed at them.

“Two things,” he said showing them the same number of fingers. “One, don’t you fucking dare call that kid my fuckin’ brother again, you hear me? I don’t care how much metal you got in you, B Barnes, I got more magnets than I got time upstairs right now. We can find out just how strong they are any time you’re ready. And two,” he twisted his head so that his white eyes stared into the depths of Clint’s very soul. “You ain’t good enough for him even if he was single and ready to mingle. Get scarce, Robin Hood.”

Yikes.

Red had some serious firepower hovering around him and he probably didn’t even know.

“You might be shit outta luck on this one, Barton,” Barnes admitted over coffee back in their neighborhood.

UGH.

All Clint wanted was to have and hold this no-doubt gorgeous man for like, one night and one night only. That’s all he wanted. They’d get pizza; Red would be charmed by Lucky. Maybe they’d do a little target practice, play some darts, have some beer, get a little frisky and call it a night.

Was that too much to ask for?

Barnes scoffed.

“Are you serious, man? What if he’s a high class kind of guy?” he asked. “You know these kids nowadays, all millionaires coming out to save humanity from itself. They ain’t interested in a pizza and beer date, they want you to take ‘em to the Ritz.”

“His boots are balding,” Clint pointed out.

“Steve and I went to this gig where this man at our table paid for his shoes to come pre-beat to shit, Barton. People with money are _animals_,” Barnes countered.

“He ain’t got money, you hear the accent on him?” Clint snapped.

“Yeah, sounds fake as hell,” Barnes snapped back. “Man talks like he’s some big bad wolf. People talked like that in Hell’s Kitchen _my_ day, Clint. They ain’t talk like that anymore. Probably heard people on tv talking like that and decided it’d be cool if he added it to his act. For all we know, he might really sound like you.”

Clint and his baby mid-western accent were offended, sir.

“It ain’t a baby nothing.”

Get fucked, asshole. They had a real problem on their hands. And that was that they were no closer to knowing Red’s main squeeze than they had been when they started this endeavor.

“I mean, I guess we can ask Nat,” Barnes suggested.

UGH. That meant going back up north. This day was exhausting.

They split up again. Barnes went to go interrogate Natasha. Clint went to Hell’s Kitchen to see if he couldn’t draw the devil out and maybe have a frank conversation.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and wandered around to all the places people of their ilk had reported they’d been manhandled, threatened, or otherwise surprised by the devil. It was pretty dark already, he’d be out soon for sure.

Clint caught the eye of someone watching him and glanced over only to be graced with fucking Castle again, snickering at him and giving him a big thumbs up before vanishing into the shadows.

Exhausting.

He played kick the can with himself down a stretch of road for a while when he finally heard it.

Thank fuck for hearing aids; he didn’t know what he’d have done if he’d missed the sweet, dulcet sound of a number of familiar broad accents flying around the building beside him. They were accompanied by the sound of harsh breathing and the slap of fists meeting mats. Punching bags.

It was a gym.

He looked up at the sign.

Huh. Place looked like it’d been built in the eighties. Clint was impressed. Most places like this had been replaced with fancy, halogen light-lit sports and fitness centers.

“Oh,” he heard behind him. His spine straightened and he turned around to see Franklin Nelson standing there.

Nelson, his lawyer. Barnes’s lawyer. The whole Cap-team’s lawyer, really.

He was a bang-up guy, Nelson. Sharp as a tack with a quick wit and gentle eyes. He looked more relaxed out of lawyer-clothes. Clint was almost taken aback by it. He only ever saw Nelson in impeccably chosen suits with smart shoes.

And here he was, lookin’ like a dirty hipster like the rest of them with ga—hold up.

“You got _gauges_?” Clint blurted out instead of a greeting like a normal person.

Nelson blinked at him in surprise in the neon light of the gym and then laughed good naturedly.

“Heya Clint,” he said. “Sure do. Usually got holders in at work, though. It’s not _professional_, apparently. Or so my mom tells me. What’re you doing around these parts, man? Checking out the real estate?”

Well, the better question was what was Nelson doing in these parts.

“What?” Nelson said. “Dude, I grew up here.”

What.

“Yeah, my folks, uh—see the edge of that building, ‘bout four blocks down, the burnt orangey-red? Yeah, that’s my folks’ store.”

WHAT.

“Tell me about it. I _told_ them not to go for that shit; but they were all ‘bright colors are threatening’ as if Home fuckin’ Depot ain’t two shades shy of a traffic cone, you know what I mean?”

Clint could not tear his eyes away from this man.

He’d thought, stupidly, that he knew him.

Nelson had gotten him out of more interview rooms and handcuffs than he could count by that point.

But more importantly—

“You have a _crazy_ accent,” Clint pointed out a little hysterically.

Nelson recoiled and went from chill to self-conscious in a heartbeat. Clint felt awful immediately.

“No, I don’t mean it like that,” he babbled. “It’s not a bad thing, it’s just, I’ve uh. Never heard you talk like that before.”

Nelson’s shoulders relaxed, even though he stayed a little sheepish.

“Oh, it’s okay,” he said, prim and proper again. “Sorry, just kinda slips out sometimes. It’s all my old man, really. I, uh. Had a prof at law school once tell me I sounded like a, uh.” Nelson dropped his eyes all the way to the ground. His smile had gone sour. “A contractor,” he said bitterly.

Oh no,

Oh _no_. This guy must have worked so hard to get past that stigma.

Oh noooo.

“It’s good,” Clint choked. “Really, for real. It’s—it’s not bad at all. Really suits you. Down to earth and all that.”

“Right,” Nelson said still not making eye contact.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

“Hey, I’m gonna go,” Nelson said, thumbing over his shoulder.

FUUUUUUUUUCK.

“I’ll see you around; don’t get arrested tonight, yeah?”

I’M.

SO.

SORRY.

NELSON.

“Yeah,” Clint creaked after him. “You do that. I won’t.”

Nelson smiled at him and turned back the way he’d come.

“Foggy!”

He stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

“Oh,” he said. “There you are. I was looking for you.”

Clint blinked and looked back and saw nothing, then looked up and saw a guy leaning over the gym’s tall fence.

He wore dark glasses even though it was nearly nine at night. He pointed a finger gun about 40 degrees too far right of Nelson.

“_I _was not,” he said. Nelson’s face dropped into a sneer.

“You’re not funny,” he said. “We talked about this; you’ve never been funny. Not a day in your life—”

“Watch your tone, mister,” the guy threatened. “Or the devil’ll getcha.” He paused, then perked up. “Are you here to pick me up?”

“No,” Nelson deadpanned, “I’m here to take Fogwell out for a fuckin’ joyride—what do you think, asshole?”

This fence-guy had an amazing smile.

Like.

Stunning.

Holy shit.

Forget Red. Nelson’s buddy was adorable.

“Stay there, I’ll be right out,” the little stunner said. He dropped down from the fence and called over to someone on the other side that he was done and going home early.

Clint smirked and looked back at Nelson.

“Well, ain’t _he_ a doll?” he teased.

Nelson stared at him. Then seemed to come to a realization.

“Oh,” he said, “Oh, sorry Clint, I totally forgot. That’s my partner. He’s the Murdock in the Nelson, Murdock & Page.”

What.

“Yeah, sorry. I always forget who I’ve introduced him to and who I haven’t. I think it was probably Barnes, last time. My bad.”

What the fuck?

Partner??

“So y’all aren’t…” Clint trailed off, not wanting to be a dick before committing to it.

Nelson caught on quick.

“Actually, yeah, he is,” he said. “My partner, that is. Yes. Both ways.”

God_damnit_, come on, Universe. Throw him a bone already.

“He’s adorable,” Clint said flat out.

“Sometimes,” Nelson said.

“All the time,” Murdock—fuck, look at his little wrapped up hands—

Cane.

That was a cane.

“Who’s this?” Murdock asked Nelson brightly.

This cat was blind.

“This is Clint,” Nelson introduced. “Clint Barton. He’s actually a client of ours, one of the crew that came with me from HB&C.”

Murdock’s lips slipped a little from their smile.

“Oh,” he said, “You’re one of my stepchildren.”

Nelson whacked him in the shoulder and he hissed and recoiled.

“What was that for?” he demanded. “You just go ‘round hittin’ blind folks, now, Fogs?”

“_Clients_, Matthew. How many times I gotta fuckin’ tell you—”

“Lay off, it’s been four hours since there were rules, man. You feelin’ any walls here? ‘Cause I ain’t. And you know what that means—”

“I’m banning you from jokes.”

“I’m _hilarious_.”

“You’re a fuckin’ mess is what you are.”

Oh no, they were precious together.

“Sorry Clint, ignore him, he’s a piece of work,” Nelson (Foggy? Is that what Murdock called him?) said. Murdock didn’t look like he regretted it. Instead, he wrapped a hand delicately around Nelson’s elbow.

“It’s cool,” Clint said, suddenly feeling strange.

Murdock flexed his fingers in the fabric of Nelson’s flannel shirt and cocked his head slowly to the side. His glasses looked black. His hair was dark, too, but in the gym’s light, it had a bit of a red sheen to it. He said nothing to Clint. Nelson didn’t seem to notice.

“Alright, man. Good night, then,” he said, pulling Murdock with him back down the way he’d come from to begin with. But then he stopped and turned back Clint’s way, “You may not want to stay out too late in these parts. There’s a devil on the loose,” he said.

Right.

Yeah.

Noted.

Clint waved the two off. Heard them start bantering again within a couple of yards, then heard a bark of laughter from Murdock who quieted down immediately and switched his gym bag over to the other side so he could tuck himself closer into Nelson’s side.

Barnes got nothing from Nat. They reconvened the next day.

Clint’s fingers felt jittery on his coffee cup. Barnes noticed, obviously.

“What’s your deal?” he asked.

Clint sighed and leaned his elbows on the table.

“Did you know Nelson—lawyer-Nelson—has an accent?” he asked.

Barnes tilted his head to the side.

“Yeah?” he said, “I mean, he’s got a bit of a thing. Not much, though.”

“Nope,” Clint sighed, popping the ‘p’ “Ran into him last night; turns out his mom and pop own a store in the Kitchen; he’s been covering the whole thing up for us.”

Barnes looked genuinely surprised.

“Huh,” he said. “Makes sense I guess. Folks probably wouldn’t take him too seriously if he talked like that at work. You know, probably spent his whole life making sure he didn’t sound like one of them accident-lawyers, you know the ones on tv?”

Yeah, Clint knew the ones.

Barnes snickered.

“Must come out when he’s mad,” he said. Then laughed. “God, I wanna see it, now.”

“Did you know his partner’s blind?” Clint asked.

Barnes stopped laughing.

“What? Murdock?” he asked. “Yeah, me and Sam and Steve met him when they opened the new place. I tell you what, man, that boy’s _exactly_ my type. Kid’s got a smile that could knock you outta the park, you know?”

Yeah. He knew.

Barnes paused and frowned at him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.

Oh, you know.

Just guilt.

Barnes settled down a bit.

“Clint,” he said.

Clint looked up, feeling like a naughty dog. 

“Don’t feel bad,” Barnes said. “We didn’t know he was blind for a minute either. It’s fine. He’s chill about it.”

Ugh.

“It’s not the blind thing,” Clint groaned. “I just—I think I hit one of Nelson’s sensitive spots and I just feel _bad_, you know? I tried to apologize, but I don’t know if it worked and then Murdock came outta nowhere and he’s fucking precious, but I feel like I didn’t really get to say sorry, you know?”

Barnes rolled his eyes around the room and then gave in and leaned forward.

“Alright,” he said. “Let’s just go apologize then. Then we can get on with things.”

“What do you mean?” Clint asked. “It’s a Saturday. He ain’t gonna be in the office.”

Barnes stood up and started shrugging on his coat. He scooped up his coffee.

“It just so happens,” he said while Clint stood up to follow suit, “That my dumb ass has been arrested a thousand times on the weekend. Sammy knows where he lives.”

“To apologize,” Sam sounded out carefully.

“To apologize,” Clint promised.

“What the fuck did you do?” Sam asked.

Hoo, boy.

“No, you should absolutely go apologize,” Sam decided post-explanation.

“I knooooow.”

“Hold on, lemme get my keys. I don’t trust either of you as far as I can throw you.”

Nelson lived in a condo in Hell’s Kitchen. It wasn’t exactly nice. Not gritty or anything, just well-used. Probably old. Not at all what Clint had been expecting.

He felt doubly bad for having assumed the guy was a high-roller now, too.

Apparently, Nelson spent his time and money on suits and shoes and covering up his accent so that he could just fucking function in the court system.

That was lousy, man. Real lousy.

Sam took them up to the sixth floor and then over to the second from the last apartment. He knocked on the door.

No one answered.

He knocked again.

Still nothing.

“Guess he’s out,” Sam said. “Maybe next time then—”

“Mr. Wilson.”

They all turned to see Peter standing in the doorway. He was getting big fast, this kid. His suit was also ripped and stained with blood around his cheek and neck. A good chuck of it was missing from his arm.

“Pete—Spiderman,” Sam said as they all snapped to attention. “Why’re you here?”

One of Peter’s eyes was visible through his destroyed mask.

“They hurt Foggy,” he said.

Foggy.

Foggy was what Murdock had called Nelson the other day.

Foggy was a name for a dog, not a person, but that didn’t matter if he was dead.

He wasn’t, thankfully. Yet, anyways. But that didn’t mean that Red was letting anyone near him.

God, no.

Clint had never seen someone look so feral without seeing their eyes.

“Red,” Sam said with his hands out in front of him. “It’s going to be okay, but I need you to move, honey.”

Red just about flattened himself over Nelson’s bloody torso in the alley. He showed them his teeth. Threatening. But not much more than that. Red wasn’t red at the moment, he was wrapped up in black and white and, given the state of his hands and the weird angle of his knee there, he was injured.

“Wade couldn’t be here tonight,” Peter explained. “And things got out of hand, and now Double D won’t let anyone close.”

Evidently.

Nelson was tight with Daredevil wasn’t he? They’d worked on the Fisk case together a while back.

“Red, sweetheart, I need to get in there. Or maybe you can tell me; is he breathing?” Sam asked once he’d heard Peter out.

Red’s snarl settled a little. Faded actually. He said nothing. He nodded a little.

“What kind of breathing? Breathing easy or no?” Sam asked, edging closer. Red’s teeth came back when he set his foot a little too close, too fast. Sam pulled it back carefully.

“What kind of breathing?” he repeated.

Red was breathing hard himself.

He shook his head. Sam took that as an answer.

“Okay, well. Can I assess that?” Sam asked. “Just a quick touch. Very quick, okay? If he’s not good, I’m gonna need to call 911, alright?”

Red’s breathing visibly picked up.

“I know, buddy,” Sam said sympathetically. “I know. But that’s what it’s looking like we need to do right now. Let me check, though.”

Sam stepped forward and this time, Red allowed him to. He allowed him to come all the way over to Nelson’s side, although he jerked when Sam set foot behind his own back. Sam froze and then waited for him to settle a bit, then finished his journey and touched the side of Nelson’s neck. He knelt down next to Red and listened to Nelson’s chest.

“Okay,” he said. “Alright, bud. He’s okay for now, where’s the wound?”

Red was laying on it.

A gunshot.

God. No.

Clint felt his face scrunch up in sympathy.

Nelson didn’t deserve that.

Sam put his hands over the ones Red refused to move and looked at him straight in the face.

“JB, call 911,” he said.

Red fought hard to stay at Nelson’s side. Even Peter stepping in to try to get him to let the paramedics do what they needed to was met with a frankly terrifying roar. Peter leapt back. Red bared his teeth at him and then went back to threatening the medics.

Barnes winced and looked at Clint and they both knew that what had to happen next wasn’t going to be fun.

Not good. Not good at all.

Red screamed while Barnes held him down.

It was fucking terrible.

He was hoarse. He sounded like he’d been choked out and then beaten.

He fought so hard that Clint thought that between him and Barnes, they would going to hurt him.

Sam tried to settle him down as the paramedics lifted Nelson—god, poor Nelson. He looked like he was sleeping in the worst possible way—up into the ambulance, but Red just about had a panic attack when they closed the doors.

He screamed when the ambulance started its engine and tore away for Metro Gen.

Horrible, just horrible.

The screams died down, as did the struggling, as Red finally processed that there was nothing he could do, now.

He rasped the same word over and over, nearly sobbing with Barnes’s hands pinning his own to the pavement.

Foggy.

Foggy. Foggy. Foggy.

He went quiet after a while and they realized he’d passed out.

Peter brought them to Red’s apartment. It was a big space, but it was sparse. Near empty. Second hand furniture. Only the essentials.

They settled him down on the floor, since the blood he was drenched with—his own and Nelson’s—would ruin anything else.

Peter explained quietly that Red didn’t have a healing factor. That they’d been engaged in some kind of gang conflict when the shots had rung out. They’d made Red stop dead under a man’s metal pipe before swinging around, fighting like a wounded dog.

He gotten to Nelson first.

Nelson had been awake, but confused, Peter said. He hadn’t even known it was coming.

Red had damn near murdered Nelson’s assailants. They were the guys across the street. The ones Clint and Barnes only realized after the fact had needed ambulances, too.

There were three.

They hadn’t stood a chance. Peter had had to put himself between them and his friend to dissuade him from finishing the job.

If they ever walked again, they’d be lucky.

Red had taken major damage before he’d even gotten to Nelson’s side. The guy who had hurt Nelson had gotten out only one more bullet once Red had arrived, and one that had grazed him. Sam lifted the guy’s shirt to reveal the type of bruising that came from a car crash, when the victim was a pedestrian.

Peter took the fabric from him and tore it off so that Sam could assess the damage.

Red was a lucky guy.

He had broken ribs, but no obvious internal bleeding or punctured organs. Sam felt him all over and, while he couldn’t be certain and he wanted Red to go to a hospital asap, Red didn’t seem to be reacting to any particular pressure put on his body.

He did wake up, however, when it came to his knee.

The poor guy screamed when Sam touched it and found it dislocated. He slammed a fist into the floorboards when it was iced and then abruptly pushed back into place. And his first words after enduring this pain were the same as before, only louder and clearer.

“Foggy?? _Foggy_?”

“He’s in the hospital, Double D,” Peter promised, taking Red’s hand and squeezing it. “He’s gonna be okay.”

“Foggy?”

“He’s okay, Red,” Sam said. “You did a good job, kept pressure on the wound. He’ll be okay.”

“Foggy??”

A one-track mind, this guy had. No sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

“Honey, we need to wash you off,” Sam said soothingly. “You think you can sit up or no?”

Peter offered to help, but it was as though Red couldn’t hear him. He pawed at Peter’s mask.

“P-Peter?” he eventually asked.

“Yeah, it’s me,” Peter said. “Work with me, old man.” He tucked an arm under Red’s shoulders and pulled him forward a bit. Red hissed in pain and then lashed out.

“No,” Peter said. “Hey! Hey, Double D, it’s me. It’s Peter. Hey!”

The hand found Peter’s torn mask again.

“There you go,” Peter said. “See? It’s me.”

Red wasn’t looking at him, though. Red seemed to be staring at the door.

“Where’s Foggy?” he rasped.

“Hospital,” Peter said. “Let me help you sit up.”

“They took him,” Red realized in devastation.

“They needed to,” Peter said to him. “Double D, help me—”

Red threw himself over and fought hard with the weight of his body and his injuries to get his feet under him. Sam panicked. Apparently this was not what he’d had in mind about the whole ‘sitting up’ situation.

“Red, no,” he said.

The guy didn’t listen, he managed to get to his feet. Wobbly, but up.

“Red,” Sam warned. “You could have internal bleeding. You need to be—”

Red stared at nothing for a long period of silence.

“Two broken ribs,” he whispered.

Barnes stood up.

“Pressure on head,” Red said. “Concussion. Swelling on back. Swelling on ribs. Swelling on knee. Hot on knee. Pressure on knee.”

He went still again. Silent.

“No major organs harmed,” he decided. And just like that, he was off. Dragging bloody fingers across the walls of his apartment. Crash-stumbling over to what looked like a seam in the wall, only to peel it back and reveal it to be the sliding door to a bedroom. He swore as he reached back and ripped the remains of his torn shirt over his head.

His back was blue and gray, mottled with pink and pale, pale peach. There were scars on it. Thin ones.

Peter and Sam went chasing after him, both apparently aware of what he was doing. Clint and Barnes hung back, unsure of what their place in this situation now was.

“You can’t go, Red,” Sam was saying in the bedroom. “They’ll admit you if you go in looking like that.”

Ah.

He wanted to go meet Nelson at the hospital. He wouldn’t meet him if he went, though. Nelson would probably be in surgery for a while to come here.

“Get off me,” Red gasped.

“Double D, please,” Peter said. “You’re hurt really bad.”

“GET OFF ME.”

Jesus.

“Red, you need to sit down. You’re going to hurt yourself,” Sam ordered.

An abrupt moment of silence followed.

“This is my fault,” Red’s voice said.

He sounded young. Raspy and cracking.

Heartbroken.

“This is my fault. This is my fault.”

Barnes took in a breath and looked away from the doorframe. Clint couldn’t look at it either. He swallowed hard.

“Oh my god,” Red choked out of sight, “Oh my god. God, _please_. Not Foggy. _Please _God_, _not Foggy.”

“Come here, honey,” Sam said, sounding resigned and exhausted. “Come here, there you go. Bring it in. It’s okay. It’s not your fault. He’s going to be okay.”

All this space in this damn loft and not a single bit of air.

Fuck. Clint couldn’t breathe. Barnes pressed his hair back from his face with both hands.

The soft sound of muffled sobs was almost too much to bear.

“It’s okay,” Sam said slowly, “It’s okay. Everyone’s going to be okay. Peter? Do me a favor, huh? Call Page, would you?”

Page?

As in, a pager?

Peter stepped out of the room to do it. He’d shucked his mask sometime while he was in the bedroom and he was white as a sheet. One of his eyes was already blackening. He didn’t look up at Clint or Barnes, he was busy tapping at his phone with shaky hands.

He held it to his ear just as shakily and after a moment said, “Karen?”

Karen.

Karen Page.

Karen Page.

Nelson.

Murdock.

And Page.

Jesus fuck.

Jesus fucking Christ.

“Karen, someone shot Foggy,” Peter said, sounding every one of his seventeen years. “No, yeah. In an ambulance. To Metro Gen. Matt’s with us. No, I don’t think he is, I think he’s having a panic attack. No, he can’t. He’s really hurt. Mr. Wilson—Sam, not Wade. Okay. Okay. I’ll let him know. Okay, thank you. I’m okay, just scared I think. I’ll—yeah. Thank you.”

The kid hung up and finally met Clint’s eyes.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said, as if Clint would. Peter held his eyes until he dipped his head in a promise. He did the same thing to Barnes who gave a stronger answer, and then he left them both back for the bedroom where he told Sam that Karen Page was on the way to Metro Gen as they spoke.

“She said Foggy’s gonna be okay, Matt,” Peter said gently. “She said he’s stubborn like that. And probably super annoyed—she said he’s damn near invincible when he’s annoyed.”

This probably should have inspired a laugh, but it did not. Only greater distress from Matthew Murdock, Attorney at Law. The second third of Nelson, Murdock & Page.

The smiling guy on the fence the other day with the dark glasses. The guy running around with old men at a gym from the 80s. Learning how to talk big like them. Holding Franklin Nelson’s arm on the way home.

Who was guiding who back there?

Did Nelson know?

Did Nelson know that the local devil curled around his arm when they walked?

Did Nelson know that he was being lied to by this man’s dark glasses and stick?

“This is fucked up,” Clint breathed finally in Barnes’s direction.

Barnes could only worry his hair out of its bun.

“Fucked up,” Clint sighed.

Without the black sweater and white ropes, the devil was a resilient, quiet young man with bloody knuckles and a split lip.

The devil, sitting resigned before Clint, had given up for the time being. His fight had all but gone. He let Sam help him wash his wounds and then remained silent while Sam sunk a needle into his skin again and again, closing up the larger tears in his flesh.

He didn’t cry anymore. Didn’t seem to have it in him.

Peter had received similar treatment, bless him. He’d fallen asleep in Barnes’s lap. JB laid him out on the couch and he hadn’t moved since.

The boy was shaken. A tiny warrior. A good friend.

Red—no, Matt. Matthew—allowed him to stay, didn’t even suggest that he go home.

Matthew didn’t lift his face from the floor.

Sam told him again and again that Nelson would be okay, but the sudden emptiness this guy carried with him, this overwhelming sense of hollowness, suggested that he wasn’t so sure.

“Matt, you gotta believe in him,” Sam finally said. “You gotta fight in his corner while he can’t.”

Matthew finally lifted his face to Sam.

“I do,” he said softly. “I will.”

And that was it.

Matthew asked them to leave. No, leave the kid. He’d watch over the kid. But please, the rest of you, go.

He said thank you. He said thank you specifically to Sam.

He closed the door behind them.

Barnes breathed out and wrapped a hand around Sam’s neck to draw him close.

“I love you,” he told him.

Sam wrapped his own hands around Barnes’s.

“I know,” he said.

“He’s so much younger than I thought he’d be.”

“I know,” Sam said. “I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone. I’ve worked with him often.”

Now Sam was a man who could keep a fucking secret.

Sam turned Clint’s way next.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to ruin your crush.”

Clint felt an almost violent wave of emotion crash over him; in its wake was just coldness.

“He’s Nelson’s,” he said. “I mean, that would have been pretty fucked up.”

Sam smiled sadly.

“Yeah,” he said. “Nat told me she was shocked when she found out.”

_Nat_ was shocked?

“She said she didn’t think Nelson would waste his time on someone who he knew was so determined to die young.”

Man.

This shit just got more fucked up the longer Clint listened to it. He had half a mind to turn off his damn hearing aids to spare himself further misery.

Clint wasn’t usually a flowers kind of guy, but there was something about a near-death experience that seemed to warrant them. So he went out and picked the most obnoxious ones he could find—the weirdest ones which might suit a lawyer who wore flannel and gauges and talked with an old city drawl when he thought no one was watching him.

“What the fuck are these?” Nelson asked of Clint’s artistic creation.

“A gift of life,” Clint explained to him.

Nelson stared at him.

“I wasn’t even that in danger of dying,” he said.

Clint bit back on the urge to say ‘Sir, I believe otherwise.’ Instead, he cocked a hip to the side.

“They reminded me of you,” he said.

This did not improve Nelson’s opinion of either the flowers or their donor, it turned out.

He was distracted by the entry of a painfully attractive woman, who burst into the room screaming, “FOGGY-BEAR, YOU’RE ALIVE.”

Nelson suffered this woman’s embrace irritably.

“Are you gonna do that every time?” he asked like this was not many peoples’ idea of heaven.

A fucking _second_ stunning woman came skidding into the room after the first one; this one was panting.

“Marci,” this gal said. “How do you even do that in heels?”

Marci flung herself and all of the fabric she was wearing around to stand up tall and proud.

“With practice,” she declared.

“She used to wake up late for internship every morning,” Nelson grumbled. “Listen, I don’t care about—”

A _third_ blond gal slammed open the door and nearly made Clint piss himself.

“FOGGY DON’Y DIE,” this one cried.

“Jesus help me,” Nelson said to the ceiling.

“I DON’T WANT THE STORE.”

Clint was getting a little antsy with all these strong Nordic features in one small enclosed space.

“Please tell me you didn’t bring mom,” Nelson sighed as the third gal—his sister evidently—threw herself around him as best as she could with him lying down.

“I didn’t,” the sister said. Lied.

“You bitch,” Nelson hissed.

“You asshole.”

“You—”

“FRANKLIN.”

Oh, thank god for brown hair. Now this adoring mother, Clint could get behind. The crying and the hand waving at the running mascara on this lady’s face was too precious and cliched for this world.

“I was—I was—who would have inherited the store?” Mama Nelson sobbed.

Nelson laid back, resigned to his fate.

Oh, what a trial it was to be loved.

“You’re all dramatic as hell,” Nelson said. “Where is the most dramatic of all of you?”

There was a pause, then Mama Nelson scowled at the door and snapped, “Matty, get in here.”

And lo and behold, sheepish as could be, was little old Red. All wrapped up in a scarf and a long-sleeved sweater to hide his massive bruises.

“It’s not safe here,” he hissed from the entrance.

“Tell me about it,” Nelson said. “Come here, I’ve been shot.”

Damn. Talk about manipulation tactics. Clint needed to be taking notes.

Red inched in suspiciously—probably as a cover for the pain he himself was in—and held out a hand, which was taken by the woman who Clint assumed was Karen Page, as she was not the sister, mother or the Marci-woman. Karen guided Red over to Nelson and left their hands resting together.

Red removed his so that it laid against Nelson’s heart and then leaned down to press their foreheads together.

“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he murmured.

“Did you pray all night?” Foggy asked.

“Days, sir,” Red corrected. “My mother’s so pleased. Thinks I should consider seminary school.”

Nelson laughed.

“So,” Clint said out on the roof with his new awkward pal. “You’re taken.”

Red turned his way briefly, then leaned against the raised guardrail around the roof’s perimeter. The wind buffeted his hair and the sun showed off its ginger secrets. His face looked paler than ever with that blue and green checked scarf around his neck. Or maybe it just looked pale now because Clint could finally see most of it. Or maybe it was the darkness of the glasses his wore, the ones that made deep-pink ovals on the tops of his cheekbones.

“I’m taken,” Red—yeah, Clint got why everyone he knew actually called him that now--confirmed.

“And he’s tall, blonde and handsome.”

“So I have been told.”

Clint couldn’t just leave that. He just—it was too much.

“Are you actually—”

“Yes.”

“Hey, you didn’t even let me—”

“Blind, yes. For real, yes.”

Right. Okay.

Clint looked down at his hands and felt strange knowing that he could see them and the veins traveling over his knuckles while Red could not and never would.

“I’m deaf,” Clint said.

He waited. And got nothing in return. Red seemed much more interested in staring out (not staring? Not looking either—fuck what was he doing? Feeling maybe? Listening?) over the skyline.

“For the record,” Red finally said, “If I weren’t committed and you didn’t reek of Natasha, I’d fuck you in an instant.”

Holy—

_What_?

“But those aren’t the circumstances and you’re annoying as fuck, so I’m not sure it’s gonna work out between us, Mr. Barton,” Red finished smoothly in a tone that could not possibly be further from the raspy drawl he wore with the mask.

Clint gaped at him.

“You’re sayin’ I coulda had a chance?” he whimpered.

Red’s lips curved up into a smile. The split on the side of the bottom one was kind of charming.

“After a bath,” he said.

“Oh my god, why is life so cruel?” Clint asked the sky.

Red laughed. The same bark that Nelson brought out of him back at the gym.

Aw, _no._

He was still cute.

“I hate life,” Clint moaned.

“Why don’t we say friends?” Red asked.

Clint nearly got whiplash spinning around to see the hand held out to him. It wasn’t an open palm. It was a fist. Red kept the other one tucked around the long white stick in front of him.

“Oh my god, yes,” Clint said.

He met those knuckles with his own.

Friends were good, too.

“I don’t know what I expected,” Steve said upon opening the dumpster lid a few months later.

Red hissed at him.

“You have so much potential,” Steve told him.

He bared his teeth. Clint cuddled in closer in solidarity.

“You guys literally cannot claim a dumpster,” Steve said. “And even if you could, excluding Peter at this point is just _cruel_.”

Peter took the opportunity to pop up under Cap’s arm and cry out in triumph. He wriggled up the side of the metal can and struggled over the rim. Red made a disappointed sound when he crashed down to the bottom to finally join the two of them.

Steve stared at Clint with a face full of nothing but judgment.

“Clint, you’re the oldest person in there,” he said. “So just know that I’m considering this your fault.”

Righty-o, Cap.

“I’m calling Nelson,” Cap threatened the other two. Now that Peter was in, he pressed in close to the other two and scowled with them.


End file.
